CLASSICAL GOLDMINE.

I’m having a hard time believing this is real, but April 1st was a long time ago:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure—a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.
In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

This is stunning—it will rewrite the history of classical and post-classical literature and provide work for generations of scholars. My own excitement was roused especially by word of “a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC.” Archilochus (or Arkhilokhos, if you want to be Hellenic about it) has always been one of my favorite poets, and I still remember the thrill of the discovery thirty years ago of another substantial fragment; as soon as I got hold of a text (it took longer in those pre-internet days) I stayed up most of the night working on a translation. I can’t wait to see this one, not to mention all the other newly found masterpieces, once known by heart to every person of culture but long since forgotten. And I’m also looking forward to the “lesser work—the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day.” (Via Mithridates.)

Comments

It seems too fragmentary to be useful. If you look at the pictures in today’s Independent, you’ll see that barely half the page is there is most cases. So we’ll get lots of fragments of plays etc. I wonder if it’ll start a trend for authors to fill in the gaps.

The Egypt Exploration Society? Are we sure that Indiana Jones isn’t somehow involved in all of this? Here’s the Society’s website but on a quick look, I don’t see anything about this project:http://www.ees.ac.uk/home/home.htm

There’s also a website about the project:http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/index.html
I quickly browsed it, but I couldn’t find anything about the new discovery. There is a nice possibility though, to play around with papyri. Also, you can request a specific papyrus to be scanned first.

And you can support my book habit without even spending money on me by following my Amazon links to do your shopping (if, of course, you like shopping on Amazon); I get a small percentage of every dollar spent while someone is following my referral links, and every month I get a gift certificate that allows me to buy a few books (or, if someone has bought a big-ticket item, even more). You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

Favorite rave review, by Teju Cole:
"Evidence that the internet is not as idiotic as it often looks. This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor. It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

From "commonbeauty"

(Cole's blog circa 2003)

All comments are copyright their original posters. Only messages signed "languagehat" are property of and attributable to languagehat.com. All other messages and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily state or reflect those of languagehat.com. Languagehat.com does not endorse any potential defamatory opinions of readers, and readers should post opinions regarding third parties at their own risk. Languagehat.com reserves the right to alter or delete any questionable material posted on this site.